Hubbert's progeny
Ian M
Posts: 123
The ink is running out in pens across the world
And the appetite for the histories they have been writing –
On the part of a non-participatory readership – is sating.
Entire tracts of children are being nurtured on leaner times
To no longer expect the gushings of the oracular fountains of old
The stories of these children, they are taught, will be written in their own blood
… my strange fetish for manual labour …
you will not face the beast’s rage
after placing a single volume on his shelf
he will be docile enough with a stack of encyclopaedias
or dictionaries of holy books all leaning up against one another
under the weight of a small library,
even as he realises the project is one of a certain trend,
you will see only the slightest curvature of that strong, living wood
the beast is grumbling for sure,
but can he fail to be impressed by the sheer experiential breadth
of the burden he is carrying?
good shelving will hold beyond its capacity
but will buckle immediately
if,
after you’ve taken the load off
you try to put it back on
the beast will snap
and you may yet find yourself in its jaws
even though its task may be less arduous than many it has faced before
it has grown accustomed to a relative comfort
you had better find a way to salvage what you can of your most prized literature
before making a nimble, stealthy retreat
I ruminate on momentous cud
The accumulated crud farming us domestically
It’s my staple – fair or unfair after all
It’s what my tract was selected to digest
and whose fault is it, the pan-natural outcome
of this artificial programme?
was it a choice we made ourselves long ago
and are currently paying retrospective dues for,
or was it a tyranny foisted upon us –
one we must now resist against the grain
of our docile muscle fibre
to transcend our sad current forms
and return to the wild aurochsian majesty of before?
Chewing on my own tongue now, a wild thought occurs
I forego the next mouthful. And the next, and the next, and the next
Essay
Our formal education is flawed in many ways.
The distortion with the longest reach into society at large, and in many cases, the root cause of so many other problems is the studied disregard of the needs of the pupils that run the educational gauntlet.
Children are forced to learn what they have no interest, much less applicable use for, and they must learn it all at the same time, all at the same pace whether they like it or not. They may struggle, they may breeze through bored out of their minds, but the behemoth must plod on regardless.
This is the great Learning Beast that all must serve: teachers, pupils, examiners (for even those who first facilitated its creation must now be subservient,) parents, governments alike. And it must lumber on!
No matter how badly it works?
Learning is an organic process. Not all people learn things at the same rate or to the same degree of complexity. Not all matters contain the same relevance to all people. At the base of all prized knowledge is the interest trough which it has been acquired. Without interest or relevance (and more often than not, these two crop up simultaneously,) there is not much you can force somebody to learn and have them remember for a significant length of time.
The great things about being interested is that it is a driving force all of its own. No need for enthusiasm to be whipped up artificially: if you have an interest you are drawn naturally to its satisfaction. And the other great thing, of course, is that you are impelled to other learning, perhaps even beyond the imposed curriculum! Thus you set your own engine off on its unique voyage of discovery.
And there lies the rub. Just how pure are our educators’ intentions? Can they maintain their supposed dedication to the ‘opening of young minds’ when so much of their apparatus seems geared against any independence of thought? The ‘intention’ here being that of the Monster Establishment (if it can be said to be possessed of such a thing,) not necessarily that of those who make up its component parts.
As an afterthought on the ‘long reach into society’: I see people like Patti Smith on the telly going ‘lalalala’ when a ‘scientific explanation’ for, say, the magic of light as represented in photography. This, the legacy of having knowledge imposed upon you at an early age when you were not yet ready for it; when none of the necessary component parts of interest had been set in place beneath to prepare the way for it. A knowledge has no meaning if … it has no meaning. It is hollow at the core if it was not in some way a discovery that you yourself had been driving to. And so people associate certain knowledge – things that in normal circumstances might have astonished them, might have served to deepen their understanding and to increase (*not* decrease) the sense of wonder – with negative feelings. They choose ignorance because it is a proven safety and because their only experience of living beyond its reaches has been the robbery of their sense of awe with precious little left by way of compensation.
Seven Glares
With seven glares I fix the lady of the static advertisement,
but still she would not change her benign expression.
And so dumbfound I walk on past her on to the next
with an asinine thesis typed, bound, published on my face.
Reading
Thanks should go to Emma / I landed on my feet once more
A pretty young Welsh girl / Without having made any prior plans
Who lent me space in her tent / Relying on fortune’s dealing
After she stood on my left shoulder / I drew a happy hand
In the heaving, sodden crowd / To score shelter from the night rains
During the second encore / And fine one-off companions round a smokey fire
And the appetite for the histories they have been writing –
On the part of a non-participatory readership – is sating.
Entire tracts of children are being nurtured on leaner times
To no longer expect the gushings of the oracular fountains of old
The stories of these children, they are taught, will be written in their own blood
… my strange fetish for manual labour …
you will not face the beast’s rage
after placing a single volume on his shelf
he will be docile enough with a stack of encyclopaedias
or dictionaries of holy books all leaning up against one another
under the weight of a small library,
even as he realises the project is one of a certain trend,
you will see only the slightest curvature of that strong, living wood
the beast is grumbling for sure,
but can he fail to be impressed by the sheer experiential breadth
of the burden he is carrying?
good shelving will hold beyond its capacity
but will buckle immediately
if,
after you’ve taken the load off
you try to put it back on
the beast will snap
and you may yet find yourself in its jaws
even though its task may be less arduous than many it has faced before
it has grown accustomed to a relative comfort
you had better find a way to salvage what you can of your most prized literature
before making a nimble, stealthy retreat
I ruminate on momentous cud
The accumulated crud farming us domestically
It’s my staple – fair or unfair after all
It’s what my tract was selected to digest
and whose fault is it, the pan-natural outcome
of this artificial programme?
was it a choice we made ourselves long ago
and are currently paying retrospective dues for,
or was it a tyranny foisted upon us –
one we must now resist against the grain
of our docile muscle fibre
to transcend our sad current forms
and return to the wild aurochsian majesty of before?
Chewing on my own tongue now, a wild thought occurs
I forego the next mouthful. And the next, and the next, and the next
Essay
Our formal education is flawed in many ways.
The distortion with the longest reach into society at large, and in many cases, the root cause of so many other problems is the studied disregard of the needs of the pupils that run the educational gauntlet.
Children are forced to learn what they have no interest, much less applicable use for, and they must learn it all at the same time, all at the same pace whether they like it or not. They may struggle, they may breeze through bored out of their minds, but the behemoth must plod on regardless.
This is the great Learning Beast that all must serve: teachers, pupils, examiners (for even those who first facilitated its creation must now be subservient,) parents, governments alike. And it must lumber on!
No matter how badly it works?
Learning is an organic process. Not all people learn things at the same rate or to the same degree of complexity. Not all matters contain the same relevance to all people. At the base of all prized knowledge is the interest trough which it has been acquired. Without interest or relevance (and more often than not, these two crop up simultaneously,) there is not much you can force somebody to learn and have them remember for a significant length of time.
The great things about being interested is that it is a driving force all of its own. No need for enthusiasm to be whipped up artificially: if you have an interest you are drawn naturally to its satisfaction. And the other great thing, of course, is that you are impelled to other learning, perhaps even beyond the imposed curriculum! Thus you set your own engine off on its unique voyage of discovery.
And there lies the rub. Just how pure are our educators’ intentions? Can they maintain their supposed dedication to the ‘opening of young minds’ when so much of their apparatus seems geared against any independence of thought? The ‘intention’ here being that of the Monster Establishment (if it can be said to be possessed of such a thing,) not necessarily that of those who make up its component parts.
As an afterthought on the ‘long reach into society’: I see people like Patti Smith on the telly going ‘lalalala’ when a ‘scientific explanation’ for, say, the magic of light as represented in photography. This, the legacy of having knowledge imposed upon you at an early age when you were not yet ready for it; when none of the necessary component parts of interest had been set in place beneath to prepare the way for it. A knowledge has no meaning if … it has no meaning. It is hollow at the core if it was not in some way a discovery that you yourself had been driving to. And so people associate certain knowledge – things that in normal circumstances might have astonished them, might have served to deepen their understanding and to increase (*not* decrease) the sense of wonder – with negative feelings. They choose ignorance because it is a proven safety and because their only experience of living beyond its reaches has been the robbery of their sense of awe with precious little left by way of compensation.
Seven Glares
With seven glares I fix the lady of the static advertisement,
but still she would not change her benign expression.
And so dumbfound I walk on past her on to the next
with an asinine thesis typed, bound, published on my face.
Reading
Thanks should go to Emma / I landed on my feet once more
A pretty young Welsh girl / Without having made any prior plans
Who lent me space in her tent / Relying on fortune’s dealing
After she stood on my left shoulder / I drew a happy hand
In the heaving, sodden crowd / To score shelter from the night rains
During the second encore / And fine one-off companions round a smokey fire
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